CNN’s O’Rourke town hall finishes behind Fox News, MSNBC

CNN’s Iowa town hall with former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas) attracted just 714,000 viewers on Tuesday night, according to early Nielsen Media Research. 

The CNN live event with the 2020 presidential hopeful was hosted by chief political correspondent Dana Bash from Des Moines. 

{mosads}The total viewers tally placed the CNN programming third in the 10 p.m. cable news race behind Fox News, which attracted 2.393 million viewers for “The Ingraham Angle,” and MSNBC’s “The Last Word” with Lawrence O’Donnell, which drew in 2.274 million total viewers. 

In the 25-54 demographic that advertisers covet most, Fox also led the way with 378,000 viewers. MSNBC was again second with 328,000 in the category and CNN third with 203,000. 

For context, the O’Rourke event was a decrease of 29 percent in total viewers when compared to CNN’s Tuesday night average in 2019. In the key demographic, the event was down 38 percent.   

CNN has featured many Democratic 2020 presidential candidates in town halls thus far in 2019, including Sens. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass) twice, and Cory Booker (D-N.J.), as well as former Rep. John Delaney (D-Md.), Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) and South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg. Overall the network has hosted more than 20 town halls this year. 

CNN announced Monday that the network will host four more town halls with 2020 presidential contenders in the coming weeks.

Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) will appear on CNN Thursday, May 30, at 10 p.m. The event will also be moderated by Bash. 

Democratic Reps. Seth Moulton (Mass.), Tim Ryan (Ohio) and Eric Swalwell (Calif.) are also slated to appear Sunday, June 2, in back-to-back town halls beginning at 6 p.m. and lasting one hour each. The moderators for those events will be anchors Victor Blackwell, Poppy Harlow and Jim Sciutto, respectively.